The 18th Emergency Clown Nose® pick of the Holiday Season is Mark Twain. In this series I’m exploring the noble as well as ignoble clown. Each day through Christmas look for posts to my blog, www.LloydBrant.com, of a different public figure that either delighted in playing the clown, or that the public has unfortunately chosen to paint as a clown.
Mark Twain is one of the most important comic voices that America has ever produced. Born in the tumultuous 1800s, his humor helped heal a divided nation, and was a vital comic lubricant as America suffered the birth pains of the 20th century. Twain believed, “Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away.”
The genius of Mark Twain is that he exposed the folly in everyone, including himself. Twain once wrote, “I have no race prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse.”
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